Turkey’s
privatization board said yesterday that it approved the sale of a 51
percent stake in the state-run petrochemicals company Petkim to the
second-highest bidder.
The decision paves the way for the handover of
the company to a consortium of the Azeri oil company Socar, Turkey’s
Turcas and Saudi-based Injaz Projects. The consortium had made the
second-best offer of $2.04 billion, after a $2.05 billion bid from a
consortium of the Kazakh Caspi Neft and Eurasia companies, the Russian
bank Troika Dialogue and a number of Kazakh investors.
The tender
commission, however, asked authorities to approve the second-highest
bid for the company, without giving a reason. Turkish newspapers
reported after the tender that 65 percent of Troika Dialogue’s shares
belonged to a major Russian-Armenian investor described as a chief
financer of the Armenian diaspora in the West.